Have a Care in the Shadows
by Phina Tera
Summary: What happened before. Everybody has a story. This is one possible version: her network of informants and gossips tells her about a pair of idiots down in Wyoming. Spoilers up to 3.02.


**Title:** Have a Care in the Shadows (or What Happened Before)  
**Spoilers:** up to and including _Supernatural_ 3.02  
**Disclaimer: **All _Supernatural_ characters belong to Eric Kripke et al. No profit made in the creation of this.

Erin wasn't raised a fool. She doesn't go into any situation half cocked, her Mamma'd kick her ass for that. So, when her network of informants and gossips tells her a pair of idiots opened a Devils' Gate down in Wyoming, Erin doesn't go running down to confront them. Instead she finishes off a coven in Salem (always a trouble spot that place) and then drives hell bent for leather to Wyoming and the Devil's Gate. When she gets there it is cold and closed with nothing for her to patch up.

So Erin starts looking for information. Harvelle's Roadhouse is only a charred ruin when she arrives and Erin starts to feel uneasy. The Roadhouse has always been neutral. It feels so wrong for it to be leaving soot on her boots as she pokes around the remains. There's nothing to do but sort through the rubble and see if anything is salvageable. There is nothing. More worrisome is the lack of bones. It looks like it blew up yet there are no remains, not even the thick middle of a femur in the ashes. Somebody has already been through and taken the bodies. In her gut is the feeling that tells her something big is happening. She finds a pack of charred tarot cards with curling edges.

"Things are comin' an' baby-girl, you goin' be right in it."

Her mother's smoke roughed voice curls through her mind as she tosses the ruined cards aside even as she remembers watching her mother shuffling the cards and laying them out.

Feeling into the webs of hunters and psychics she's collected over the years, some of them are new and some she took over from her mother's collection, Erin searches of the names of the two idiots in Wyoming. Her informants whisper to her of two brothers on a quest to slay a demon.

"Sam and Dean Winchester," they tell her, their voices hissing through the static ridden cell connection, "Dean and Sam and John flying through the country killing everything."

The psychics talk about the wave they felt running over the world, rippling out from Wyoming it touched them, tasted them, and left them thankful to be passed over.

Her phone rings just as she's shot the werewolf that she spent six hours tracking through the bayous. Erin answers even though she still needs to get rid of the body – it pays to answer all the calls just in case one of them has the critical detail. It's Seidr, one of her psychic; she would recognize that sing song voice anywhere.

"Their women burn and their Daddy died and now it's Sam and Dean, and those boys are wild boys, reckless boys playing at what they can't understand." Seidr tells her, as Erin cradles the phone against her shoulder and starts dismembering the dead werewolf. Its sightless eyes stare at her from across the room as she slips her knife through its shoulder socket to break the joint apart.

"I can feel him."

Erin knows better than to ask her anything so she piles the body parts up and begins to douse them with accelerant as she listens to Seidr ramble about one of the Winchester boys hovering on the horizon.

"He wings his way to Illinois. The windy city awaits him. Can you feel him coming where the oaks bow?"

Seidr's voice breaks and now she's not remotely coherent only muttering and humming. Erin hangs up. She's had Seidr in her web long enough to know that it will be days before she's coherent again. She heads for Chicago. In her review mirror the building burns and she knows that if she was closer she could almost smell the cooking flesh of the dead werewolf. She doesn't stop to inhale the smell and watch the flames turning the night orange because she has the Winchesters to find before they do something else as stupid as opening a Devil's Gate.

It's been four days since the psychics felt the ripple when she catches up to them in Oak Park. She watches and waits. The shorter brother, the manic one, picks up two busty brunettes while she hides in a corner nursing a beer and some of the greasiest nachos she's ever eaten. His tall brother is focused on a laptop and doesn't even react when she sneaks a look at it on the pretense of getting a refill. It looks like research on demon deals. Just seeing those old wood cuts gives Erin a bad feeling, if he's looking at that they must be planning something even worse than Wyoming. She'll have to stop them at the crossroads.

The Winchesters are weird. After a day and half of watching them she's sure of it. Sam, the pensive one, and Dean, the manic manslut - honestly a sailor might have a girl in every port but Dean's got a girl for every hour – don't seem like any brothers she's known. Sam sits in the Impala. It's an almost stupidly flashy car for people on the FBI's wanted list and she wonders why they haven't ditched it for something less conspicuous like her own dull grey Ford. He's bent over a book but mostly just staring at the motel window while his brother's bed sports writhe across the curtains like an X-rated shadow play. When Sam goes into the motel room Erin can't believe it especially given how Dean's silhouette is definitely not basking in the afterglow if his arched back is anything to go by. She wonders who phoned Sam to make the brothers jack-rabbit out of there so fast. They don't even notice her watching them and she feels disappointed by that. They were supposed to be good but they haven't noticed her tailing them.

Erin follows them to a farmhouse and more hunters show up. The desiccated corpses in the house have all the signs of a demon and she silently revises her estimate of the Winchesters when she realizes that Bobby Singer is working with them – he wouldn't work with amateur idiots. She watches Dean get jumped by Tamara and Isaac. The couple blundered about so loudly that she's amazed Dean didn't notice them. Something is obviously bothering him enough to put his guard down. She stays hidden while Singer chats up the couple.

Their investigations are not bad, she has to admire how well Singer cleans up, and Sam finally gives an indication that he knows he's being followed. Fortunately he's about as subtle as a Pekinese so she has plenty of time to hide. It's about time they noticed that she's following them. In the store, crouched behind a shoe display, she listens to Dean cough and play on his year to live. A year – not a demon deal since they don't go that short – so maybe cancer? He's obviously terminal. Maybe they want a supernatural cure? It's a little sad to think that Bobby Singer is hanging with idiots like that.

She's watching the house and trying to decide if she should show herself; if it was just Singer she would but the Winchesters still aren't proven. They might be the kind of idiots who want to play hero and she isn't about to get mixed up with people like that. They tend to get everybody around them killed too and she doesn't need to learn that lesson again.

Erin shifts slightly so that her knee isn't resting on a rock. As she turns she sees the tell-tale black smoke trail of an incorporeal demon winging towards her. There is just enough time for her fumble for the holy water before the demon slides roughly into her mouth. She tastes ash and sulphur mixing with the iron tang of blood before the world goes dark.

She smells damp leaves. Her body feels loose and smooth. The stiffness from her long ago broken shoulder is gone and she can taste the dampness of the night on her tongue. The tang of salt and gasoline threading into asphalt and paint leaves a metallic taste in her throat. She blinks and the night is bright, everything painted into sharp contrast and Erin knows this isn't her vision, this isn't her body anymore. She isn't Erin.

"We're Ruby now."

The voice curling through her mind is rough as pumice over silk and Erin feels herself slipping away. She feels something shifting through her memories, riffling through them like so many impersonal records and not her dearest possession. Erin tries to throw out the demon, tries to grab for her holy water but her body is no longer her own. She is only a silent passenger.

"Ruby" She hears her own voice say as her body stands without her consent.

The knife in Ruby's hand hums to her and she smiles. It's hungry for blood, hungry for the demons and she's going to feed it tonight. The seven sins show up at midnight just as she expected. She watches as they play with the sack of meat that used to be human; Isaac, his name was Isaac, her stolen memories tell her. She watches the overly emotional woman barging out the door, sees her foot ruin the salt line. Ruby can feel the barriers fall as the cubed crystals scatter. Tamara plunges the stake into her own husband's chest as she cries unaware of her silent watcher. Ruby can taste the tears on the night air and she smiles. The knife is hungry. It aches, a bone deep need to feed, to split flesh and bathe in blood. She smiles, a feral baring of teeth, and slips from the shadows. It's time to feed, time to find the boy King. Her new body is thrumming with adrenaline, it's been a long time since she felt this rush that humans take for granted. It's going to be a hell of a time.

End

**Notes:** Since demons need a host to work on this plane of existence, I think it's safe to assume that Ruby isn't helpful!demon's real form. There is a whole 'nother backstory out there to fit with helpful!demon's host-body. This is one possibility for the girl whose body Ruby is using. As season three continues I expect the canon will probably make this wrong.


End file.
